[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[John Buehler]

Richard A. Bartle writes:

>> Why remove an accomplishment from a player when the reason that
>> they're playing the game is to accomplish things?

> Because the accomplishment is meaningless otherwise?

I'd assert that personal accomplishments in any world are meaningless
in any case.  A view borne of my ethics and morals.  If you want
accomplishments to mean something, have them result in benefit for
others.  Otherwise, you're only feeding a compulsion that players feel
to prove themselves worthy.  You make mention of this very effect in
your killer vs. politician conflict comment in another thread.
Killers are trying to prove themselves worthy to themselves, while
politicians are trying to prove themselves worthy to others.  I submit
to you that achievers are doing the same thing.  I wouldn't feed that
need any more than I would the killers.

>> The only thing that will happen is that the player will 'work'
>> intensively to get that achievement back.  This produces the
>> powergaming effect.

> Alternatively, they may take the opportunity to make a fresh start
> and set about playing a new character in an entirely different
> way. If a player feels that the game is getting stale, or samey,
> then rather than carry on in the same rut until they get bored and
> leave they might relish the chance to start anew. It's very unlikely
> they'll enjoy the process by which they came to get to that stage,
> but once they're at it it gives them a fresh start. It's only
> unidimensional, friendless achievers who powergame themselves back
> to where they were.

It depends on the structure of the game.  You may be assuming that
there are effects in place that typically are not.  In a world
predicated on achievement and gain of power, what you're talking about
hasn't been happening.  That's because worlds based on achievement of
power stratify.  They stratify both in terms of the player social
structure as well as the entertainment that can be derived from the
game.  As evidence, Asheron's Call and EverQuest (sorry, I don't do a
lot of text gaming).  Players don't quit even when it's boring because
the social element of th games is predicated on staying with your
social group in that stratified structure.  The social element is
obviously a big draw to a multiplayer game.

So it all depends on your game structure in the end.  Which is why I
personally beat on games that are predicated on the accrual of
charcater power.  It's a bad recipe.

>> If achieving is the entertainment, then the doing typically isn't
>> all that entertaining.

> On the other hand, if anyone can achieve then the achieving isn't,
> ither...

If all players can't, then you're requiring player skill in order to
achieve.  While I believe that *some* player skill should be involved,
how much are you assuming?  Personally, I don't want to be overtaxed
in my manual dexterity, nor my brainpower.  I'd prefer to simply
pursue some entertainment.  I find enough challenges in my job.  Maybe
others don't, and want more challenges in their games.

>> The maze isn't fun, just getting the cheese.  If the maze wasn't
>> fun the first time, and the cheese is the same, the player isn't
>> going to derive much of any entertainment in repeating what they
>> did.

> No, but they can do the maze twice as quick if they know the route,
> and the cheese tastes better if not everyone gets to eat it.

Any anyone standing in the maze trying to decide left or right just
gets blown past by the returning powergamer.  The guy standing in the
maze wants to ask a question, but the powergamer is already gone.  The
guy standing in the maze develops the same attitude as in EverQuest,
which is that powergamers are annoying - and there are too many
powergamers in this world.  Not unlike that guy who brushes past you
in real life when you're trying to figure something out and would like
to ask his help.  He's too busy to help you.  How entertaining for
everyone.

>> In such a world, death can be avoided if you're willing to *not*
>> push things to the absolute limit (and the gain is modest in any
>> case).  But if you push too hard, your character dies.

> I covered this in the article.

> The issue is, whether there are some things you can only get if you
> DO risk death, or whether risking death just gives you the same
> thing that you could get without risking it, only quicker.

And I submit that there are forms of entertainment in the game world
(spots in the maze) that are inherently dangerous to stand in and
could result in your death.  This is different from your idea that
there are gains (cheese at the end of the maze) that can be achieved
quickly or slowly.  I predicate my game ideas on the notion that the
cheese is largely uninteresting.

>> When it dies, it drops where it is and cannot be played for some
>> number of days.  No penalties, no resurrections, no jumping off to
>> a temple, nothing.

> And how exactly is this any more fun than having them spend that
> period playing their character back up from nothing?

Powergaming produces undesireable attitudes.  Both in the powergamer
(get outta my way, powergamer coming through) and in others who have
to deal with the powergamer.

> For a skilled player, being killed is quite a lot like this, in that
> it really only just delays them a while until they're back where
> they were before. They'll probably be a better player for it,
> though, and perhaps develop a more suitable persona, too.

I suggest the exact opposite.  Compulsion to gain the cheese can make
players more antsy when they are pushed away from it.  And players in
a game-to-gain world are compulsive about it.  The development of
persona might happen in a more balanced, introspective adult, but it's
far less likely in children.  Right, Tess?  ;)

> For an unskilled player, it would take a while longer to get back
> where they were - indeed, they may never really get much further
> because they've reached their limit playing in that particular style
> and get killed again. They might be better off trying a different
> career path instead.

You're definitely assuming other game mechanisms than I am.  I want
this effect, but I hope to achieve it by making all paths through the
game world entertaining so that decision is a no brainer.  If there is
the most awesome cheese waiting at the end of one maze and the player
wants it, they'll keep pounding on the game until they figure out how
to get it.  They might even invite a buddy over to play his character
to get that cheese, if it takes player skill.

> Your approach introduces an inconvenient delay, but that's all it
> does.  I suppose people may be encouraged to spend the time playing
> up some secondary character which they eventually prefer over their
> erstwhile main one, which is good, but in terms of making the game
> more exciting, or of stopping it getting packed with high-level
> characters, or of making achievement have value, it does nothing.

I won't have any high level characters because there aren't any in my
world (which doesn't exist, by the way).  I don't want achievement to
have nearly as much value as you seem to want.  As a result, I'm
changing the balance of player expectations and player entertainment.
I don't want it exciting.  I want it entertaining, at the level of a
hobby.  Not like watching the XFL.

>> Temporary permadeath.

> That would be tempdeath, then <grin>.

You market it your way, I'll market it my way.

>> I am only suspending entertainment through that one character, but
>> I am doing it for some number of days in order to serve as a >
>> reminder that the player is doing something that is particularly
>> hazardous.

> What's hazardous about it? The worst that can happen is you can't
> play for a few days. Big deal.

Next time you die in a game.  Stop playing it for several days.  See
how small a deal it is.  Unfortunately, I'd only ask you to do that in
a game where you don't power up through achievement.  To stay out of
such a game causes you to drop out of your power/social group, which
is not my goal.

It's not supposed to be that big of a deal.  It's a simple time out
process to remind the player that they were pushing it in a game where
typically people aren't supposed to.  Death should be fairly rare.
When it happens, you leave the world for a while.  Or you play a
different character.

>> Central to this idea is that death is not a deterrent to
>> achievement.

> It shouldn't be a deterrent to achievement, it should be a
> celebration of it. It's one of the few ways in a combat-oriented
> game to make achievement meaningful. Your skills are proven, your
> rank means something, people respect you for what you've really
> done, not what the game makes out you've done.

We're talking about *such* different games.  Your target
experience/audience is not mine.

> The problem with permanent death is that it's perceived (often with
> justification) as a deterrent to playing at all.

Because the tower of achievement that the player has accumulated was
just toppled, forcing them to built it up again from scratch.  Which
is why I argue that taking away achievement from a player is a bad
idea.  Your personality might be well suited to rising to the
challenge, embracing those obstacles so that you can overcome them.
But you're a grown man.  Will children behave the same way?

>> Want to go on a dragon hunt?  That's inherently dangerous and your
>> character could die.

> Not in your scheme. In your scheme, you character could disappear
> from the planet for 5 days and then reappear right as rain. It
> couldn't die.

Temporarily it does.  Everyone sees it lying on the ground.  Seems
pretty dead.  For a number of days.  The only other alternative is
permanent death.

>> You don't get thousands of gold pieces from the kill, nor do you
>> get the Sword of Doom.

> Never mind, I'm sure you can try again later.

You misunderstand my point.  There is no thousands of gold.  There is
no Sword of Doom to be had.  The entertainment of the hunt is your
reward.  This is why dying is a penalty of sorts.  You missed out on
the rest of the hunt, and *that* was entertaining.  You weren't around
when Gossick got whacked by the dragon's tail and landed in a tree.
You weren't there when the dragon stepped on the supplies wagon, with
all the newbies running like scared kids.  You weren't there when
Boffo got in some great whacks with his broadsword, but got bit in
half.  We didn't kill the dragon, but it was a great, entertaining
experience.

Alternately, they killed the dragon, one player using his bow to get a
shot in the eye and brain of the dragon.  The dragon dies and various
bits and pieces of the dragon are retained for their value.  But the
reason that the dragon was being hunted was because the king put a
bounty on it for having eaten oxen and horses.

At no time were we interested in gain of power or possessions.  It was
just fun.  In a world like that, denial of fun is sufficient reminder
of particularly lethal situations.

> The point about permanent death isn't to punish the people who die
> (not that "you can't have what you were expecting to get right now"
> is much of a punishment).

In a game world, I don't want to punish my players.  I want to give
them some kind of entertainment.  In lieu of that, I'll give them
denial of entertainment, or force them to pursue other kinds of
entertainment.  The penalty approach presents them with the
powergaming option, which I submit that nobody likes.  It really is a
punishment.

> The point about permanent death is to validate the measures by which
> people are judged. If everyone at level X has had to risk their
> existence to get there, it says a lot more about them than if people
> just board the level X express and step off when they reach there.

I understand that mindset, but I don't want it in my game world.  The
role of being level X in my world is slight.  Achaea has apparently
pursued a similar construct - smaller power differentials at the low
and high end.

>> You get to go on a dragon hunt.  The unique nature of the
>> entertainment is the draw.

> There'd better be more to it than mere uniqueness.

The alternative seems to be to give players a visceral thrill that
they become addicted to.  They then keep pushing that particular
button for 10 hours a day.

>> But in that particular scenario, there is a strong possibility of
>> death.

> I'd have thought so, yes, but in your scheme there isn't. You're
> calling it death, but that doesn't mean it is death. Death is
> oblivion (or, if you're religious, eternal life but you never get to
> live on the same planet as you were before while retaining any
> memory of having been there earlier). Throwing someone into a stasis
> chamber is not death.

Okay, I'll say 'death' from now on.

>> Why have this type of death at all, you might ask.  So that the
>> illusion of lethal activities remains

> But it's just that - an illusion.

> Of course, the entire game world is just an illusion, but this
> definition of death is an illusion within an illusion.

I don't think my (mythical) players would care for the destruction of
their character.  It's not entertaining at all.  Characters are a
vehicle for gaining access to entertainment.  Unless there is
near-zero value in any given character (e.g. Quake), then I assume
that players want to hang on to the one that they created.

Note that permanent death is also not true death.  The player can
construct a new character which was identical to the old.  All it
takes is time.  So permanent death only takes away everything from a
given character.  Yes, I know that you can contest this by saying that
there will be unique accomplishments and unique items that can
probably not be recovered.  But the persona that the player had can be
recreated.  And he will do it in a powergaming mode.

Only those players who love getting punished and then refuse to remain
punished would enjoy such a system.

JB


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev